- the Powers That Be are more than just the people who run things. They are the systems themselves, the institutions and structures that weave society into an intricate fabric of power and relationships. These Powers surround us on every side. They are necessary . They are useful. We could do nothing without them . Who wants to do without timely mail delivery or well-maintained roads? But the Powers are also the source of unmitigated evils.
Wink, Walter (2010-02-19). The Powers That Be (Kindle Locations 50-53). Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
The Powers don’t simply do evil. They also do good. Often they do both good and evil at the same time. They form a complex web that we can neither ignore nor escape.
Wink, Walter (2010-02-19). The Powers That Be (Kindle Locations 60-61). Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
One legacy of the rampant individualism in our society is the tendency to react personally to the pain caused by institutions. People blame themselves when they get downsized. Or they blame the executive officers for their insensitivity. But to a high degree, corporate decisions are dictated by larger economic forces— invisible forces that determine the choices of those who set policy and fire workers.
Wink, Walter (2010-02-19). The Powers That Be (Kindle Locations 61-64). Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
the Powers That Be are not merely the people in power or the institutions they staff. Managers are, in fact, more or less interchangeable. Most people in managerial positions would tend to make the same sorts of moves. A great many of their decisions are being made for them by the logic of the market, the pressures of competition , and/ or the cost of workers. Executives can be more humane. But a company owner who decides to raise salaries and benefits will soon face challenges from competitors who pay less. Greater forces are at work—unseen Powers— that shape the present and dictate the future.
Wink, Walter (2010-02-19). The Powers That Be (Kindle Locations 64-68). Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
My first real breakthrough in understanding these invisible powers came when I stumbled over the angels of the churches in the New Testament Book of Revelation. Why, I wondered, are each of the seven letters in chapters two and three addressed, not to the congregation , as in the apostle Paul’s letters, but to the congregation’s angel? The congregation was not addressed directly but through the angel. The angel seemed to be the corporate personality of the church, its ethos or spirit or essence. Looking back over my own experience of churches, I realized that each did indeed have a unique personality. Furthermore, that personality was real. It wasn’t what we call a “personification” like Uncle Sam or the Quaker on the box of oats. But it didn’t seem to be a distinct spiritual entity with an independent existence either. The angel of a church was apparently the spirituality of a particular church. You can sense the “angel” when you worship at a church. But you also encounter the angel in a church’s committee meetings and even in its architecture. People self-select into a certain congregation because they feel that its angel is compatible with their values. Hence the spirit of a church can remain fairly constant over decades, even centuries, though all the original members have long since departed.
Wink, Walter (2010-02-19). The Powers That Be (Kindle Locations 74-83). Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
The tenth chapter of Daniel in the Hebrew Scriptures extended my understanding to encompass the angels of entire nations, who represented their nation in the heavenly “court.” Cities, too, had angels, as did individuals. In other Jewish and Christian sources I discovered ancient sages who believed that everything in creation has its own angel. That meant, I concluded, that everything has both a physical and a spiritual aspect: The Powers That Be are not, then, simply people and their institutions, as I had first thought; they also include the spirituality at the core of those institutions and structures. If we want to change those systems, we will have to address not only their outer forms, but their inner spirit as well. I found the implications of that ancient view staggering. It means that every business, corporation, school, denomination, bureaucracy , sports team— indeed, social reality in all its forms— is a combination of both visible and invisible , outer and inner, physical and spiritual. Right at the heart of the most materialistic institutions in society we find spirit. IBM and General Motors each have a unique spirituality, as does a league for the spread of atheism.
Wink, Walter (2010-02-19). The Powers That Be (Kindle Locations 84-93). Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
For the angel of an institution is not just the sum total of all that an institution is (which sociology is competent to describe); it is also the bearer of that institution’s divine vocation (which sociology is not able to discern). Corporations and governments are “creatures” whose sole purpose is to serve the general welfare. And when they refuse to do so, their spirituality becomes diseased. They become “demonic.”
Wink, Walter (2010-02-19). The Powers That Be (Kindle Locations 99-102). Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
- we have repeatedly seen how those who fight domination with violence become as evil as those whom they oppose. How, then, can we overcome evil without doing evil— and becoming evil ourselves? I found myself reluctantly being pushed, simply by the logic of the inquiry, to a position of consistent nonviolence.
Wink, Walter (2010-02-19). The Powers That Be (Kindle Locations 127-130). Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
The world is, to a degree at least , the way we imagine it. When we think it to be godless and soulless, it becomes for us precisely that. And we ourselves are then made over into the image of godless and soulless selves. If we want to be made over into the image of God— to become what God created us to be— then we need to purge our souls of materialism and of other worldviews that block us from realizing the life God so eagerly wants us to have.
Wink, Walter (2010-02-19). The Powers That Be (Kindle Locations 184-187). Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
As I am using the term, worldviews are not philosophies, theologies, or even myths or tales about the origin of things. They are the bare-bones structures with which we think.
Wink, Walter (2010-02-19). The Powers That Be (Kindle Locations 192-193). Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
In the very act of opposing another person’s thought, we often share the same worldview.
Wink, Walter (2010-02-19). The Powers That Be (Kindle Locations 194-195). Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
There has been only a handful of worldviews in all of Western history.
Wink, Walter (2010-02-19). The Powers That Be (Kindle Locations 195-196). Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
- a worldview functions on an unconscious level. People are unaware of its existence.
Wink, Walter (2010-02-19). The Powers That Be (Kindle Location 196). Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
This materialistic worldview has penetrated deeply even into many religious persons, causing them to ignore the spiritual dimensions of systems or the spiritual resources of faith.
Wink, Walter (2010-02-19). The Powers That Be (Kindle Locations 230-231). Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
In reaction to materialism, theologians created or postulated a supernatural realm. Acknowledging that this higher realm could not be known by the senses, they conceded earthly reality to science and preserved a privileged “spiritual” realm immune to confirmation or refutation.
Wink, Walter (2010-02-19). The Powers That Be (Kindle Locations 234-236). Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
The slogan that many clergy were taught in seminaries was “Science tells us how the world was created, religion tells us why.”
Wink, Walter (2010-02-19). The Powers That Be (Kindle Locations 237-238). Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
This means splitting reality in two and hermetically sealing off theology from the discoveries of science and science from the wisdom of theology.
Wink, Walter (2010-02-19). The Powers That Be (Kindle Locations 238-239). Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
The price paid for this schizoid view of reality was the loss of a sense of the whole and the unity of heavenly and earthly aspects of existence.
Wink, Walter (2010-02-19). The Powers That Be (Kindle Locations 244-245). Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
We may have been sexually repressed or sexually abused as children; for us the spiritualist worldview may still be operative , leading us to deny our relationship to our bodies and locate our true essence in a transcendent, nonphysical world.
e.g. Jung's acct. of a young girl who believed that she lived on the moon.
Wink, Walter (2010-02-19). The Powers That Be (Kindle Locations 276-278). Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. But the Powers, as we have seen, are not just physical. The Bible insists that they are more than that (Eph. 3: 10; 6: 12); this “more” holds the clue to their profundity. In the biblical view the Powers are at one and the same time visible and invisible , earthly and heavenly , spiritual and institutional (Col . 1: 15– 20). Powers such as a lumberyard or a city government possess an outer, physical manifestation (buildings , personnel, trucks, fax machines) and an inner spirituality, corporate culture, or collective personality. The Powers are simultaneously an outer, visible structure and an inner , spiritual reality.
Wink, Walter (2010-02-19). The Powers That Be (Kindle Locations 299-303). Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Some first-century Jews and Christians perceived in the Roman Empire a demonic spirituality which they called Satan (the “Dragon” of Revelation 12). But they encountered this spirit in the actual institutional forms of Roman life : legions, governors, crucifixions, payment of tribute, Roman sacred emblems and standards, and so forth (the “beast” of Revelation 13). The spirit that they perceived existed right at the heart of the empire, but their worldview equipped them to discern that spirit only by intuiting it and then projecting it out, in visionary form, as a spiritual being residing in heaven and representing Rome in the heavenly council.
Wink, Walter (2010-02-19). The Powers That Be (Kindle Locations 320-325). Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Our task, working within the emerging unitary worldview, is to withdraw those projections from on high and relocate them in the institutions where they actually reside. Projection does not falsify reality. Sometimes it is the only way we can know the inner spirit of things. The demons projected onto the screen of the cosmos really are demonic, and play havoc with humanity. Only they are not up there but over there, in the socio-spiritual structures that make up the one and only real world. They exist in factories, medical centers, airlines, and agribusiness, to be sure, but also in smaller systems such as families , churches, the Boy Scouts, and programs for senior citizens. The New Testament insists that demons can have no impact on us unless they are able to embody themselves in people (Mark 1: 21– 28; Matt. 12: 43– 45; Luke 11: 24– 26), or pigs (Mark 5: 1– 20), or political systems (Rev. 12– 13).
Wink, Walter (2010-02-19). The Powers That Be (Kindle Locations 330-336). Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Humans naturally tend to personalize anything that seems to act intentionally . But we are now discovering from computer viruses that certain systemic processes are self-replicating and “contagious,” behaving almost willfully even though they are quite impersonal. Anyone who has lost computer files to a virus knows how personal this feels .
Wink, Walter (2010-02-19). The Powers That Be (Kindle Locations 339-341). Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Think, for example , of a riot at a championship soccer game. For a few frenzied minutes, people who in their ordinary lives behave on the whole quite decently suddenly find themselves bludgeoning and even killing opponents whose only sin was rooting for the other team. Afterward people often act bewildered and wonder what could have possessed them. Was it a “riot demon” that leapt upon them from the sky, or was it something intrinsic to the social situation: a “spirituality” that crystallized suddenly, caused by the conjunction of an outer permissiveness, heavy drinking, a violent ethos, a triggering incident, and the inner violence of the fans? And when the riot subsides, does the “riot demon” rocket back to heaven, or does the spirituality of the rioters simply dissipate as they are scattered, subdued, or arrested?
Wink, Walter (2010-02-19). The Powers That Be (Kindle Locations 351-356). Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
There is a growing recognition, even among secular thinkers, of the spiritual dimension of corporate entities. Terence Deal, for example, has written a text for businesses entitled Corporate Cultures, and other analysts have discerned the importance of a business’s symbolic system and mission as clues to enhancing its efficiency. The corporate spirits of IBM and General Electric are palpably real and strikingly different, as are the national spirits of the United States and Canada. What distinguishes the notion of the angel of an institution is the Bible’s emphasis on vocation. The angel of a corporate entity is not simply the sum total of all it is, but also bears the message of what it ought to be.
Wink, Walter (2010-02-19). The Powers That Be (Kindle Locations 371-376). Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Many business and corporation executives ignore God’s humanizing purposes, and speak rather of profit as the “bottom line.” But this is a capitalist heresy. According to the eighteenth-century philosopher of capitalism Adam Smith, businesses exist to serve the general welfare. Profit is the means, not the end. It is the reward a business receives for serving the general welfare. When a business fails to serve the general welfare, Smith insisted, it forfeits its right to exist. It is part of the church’s task to remind corporations and businesses that profit is not the “bottom line,” that as creatures of God they have as their divine vocation the achievement of human well-being (Eph. 3: 10). They do not exist for themselves. They were bought with a price (Col. 1: 20). They belong to the God who ordains sufficiency for all.
Wink, Walter (2010-02-19). The Powers That Be (Kindle Locations 380-386). Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
They are creatures like us— at once magnificent and abysmal, beneficial and harmful , indispensable and unendurable. If they were each isolated from the other, we might approach their transformation piecemeal, one at a time. Unfortunately, they are linked together in a bewilderingly complex network, in what we can call the Domination System. In that system, even Powers that directly compete with each other for territory or markets preserve the system by the very interactions by which they try to destroy each other. Like a massive family system, no institution or organization is allowed to “get better” without repercussions from other, more pathological Powers. The Domination System does not permit deviations from its values. If we are to take seriously the redemption of the Powers, we must follow their track into the labyrinth of the Domination System.
Wink, Walter (2010-02-19). The Powers That Be (Kindle Locations 454-460). Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
